Abstract

Political and institutional dilemmas challenge the university in the current context of converting higher education into a home for business and a market and symbolic products and commodities. In Brazil, financial capital morphs into mergers and acquisitions of educational enterprises as a movement to transform higher education in goods and services, in accordance with international free trade agreements. Notwithstanding, in critical contrast to models from North America and Europe,  in the Southern Hemisphere and Southern Bahia, new models of universities from the South are being developed, capable of promoting education and science as important values of civilisation and culture, expanding the worldwide network of resistance to the mercantilization  of the university.

Bio note

Naomar Monteiro de Almeida Filho, is a physician. He is a full professor in Epidemiology at the Public Health Institute of the Federal University of Bahia and its former rector. In 2013, Prof. Naomar de Almeida Filho was appointed Rector pro tempore of the new Federal University of Southern Bahia (Ufesba). He has been a visiting professor at various universities in the world lecturing on issues related to the epidemiology of mental disorders, particularly the effect of race, racism, gender and social class on mental health.

In recent years has focused his academic research on studies of the university and its relationship with society, as stressed in the e following books: New University: Universidade Nova: Textos Críticos e Esperançosos (Brasilia: UnB, 2007), Memorial da Universidade Nova: UFBA 2002-2010 (Salvador: Edufba, 2010), co-authored with Boaventura Sousa Santos, A Universidade no Século XXI: Para uma Universidade Nova (Coimbra: Almedina, 2008), and co-authored with Fernando Seabra Santos, A Quarta Missão da Universidade (Coimbra: University of Coimbra, 2012).

Activity within the  no âmbito do Democracy, Citizenship and Law Research Group | DECIDe